To think all the times we've been told it will never happen
Well, it's not... (yet).
I think many will read this thread and a couple of the comments and assume a mass swap out of
all ECI DSLAM's has started or is starting.
It hasn't and it isn't (again, yet).
It was suggested this will initially be tried on around 200 cabinets. That's a tiny proportion of the ECI estate.
I'd be very very surprised if they replaced all 25,000+ ECI DSLAM's with Huawei.
Andrew says in the article
we do not know is what sort of timescale is involved and how many will actually be replaced
This is likely to be very targeted (at least to start with) in circumstances like...
full/nearly full ECI cab, small amount of capacity needed, G.Fast viable area.
Swapping the ECI electronics with a Huawei MA5618 on such a cabinet would add a little capacity, remove the junk ECI kit, and add G.Fast (without the need for a pod).In some areas OpenReach have ambitions to cover entire exchanges with FTTP
Many ECI cabinets will be removed completely and not replaced as FTTP rolls out.
edit: I'll add...
I think it's great they are making an effort to do something with the inferior ECI kit.
I made a considerable effort to get off my ECI DSLAM and it made a huge improvement to both upstream/downstream.
I would much rather OpenReach rolled out FTTP to make the FTTC cabinets redundant than spend too much time and money upgrading poor kit to what is essentially the same technology.
Fortunately they are doing a bit of both.
The ECI Head-Ends may be a bigger pain than the DSLAM's, and might be part of the reason for this as Carl alluded.